My car is a 1998 Honda Civic EX with 163,XXX miles. It had a new water pump and timing belt put on, and my last oil change was approximately 2,000 miles ago. The only modifications are Koni/GC, and wheels/tires. I bought the car used and have had it for almost a year now.

I was recently driving back home from UAB (about a 3.5-4 hour drive), and incurred a problem about 30 miles out from my home while still on the interstate.

I was cruising along at around 75-80 when I would notice a sort of quick "sputter" I guess you could say that would cause the tach to jump a little as if someone flicked it with a finger. It felt like a random misfire and it happened 2 or 3 times over the course of as many minutes.

Soon after, the entire car began to stutter and shake and and my tachometer needle began jumping all over the place from 0 to nearly redline RPM (the engine obviously wasn't doing the same as it sounded like it was at a low idle about to die; which it eventually did. I was thus forced to pull over. At the time, I had around 1/4 tank or fuel left and the temperature gauge was sitting slightly below the halfway point.

After, pulling over, I attempted to restart it. It turned over fine, would start, and then die almost immediately. The second or so it was on, it would run extremely rough. About 10 minutes later, I decided to try it again. This time, it started, and kept running, though was running extremely rough as before. After about 20 seconds, things smoothed out, and it was running fine again.

I pulled back onto the interstate and limped it home where it now sits. I've started it up a couple of more times and it appears to be running normally.

Any ideas of what could be the deal? Sorry if I left out any important details.

 

Did the CEL turn on? Any CEL codes retrieved?

Check whether 7.5A fuse 15 is blown.

If the fuse is fine and there are no CEL codes, pull the ICM out of the distributor and have it tested an an auto parts store.

 

Ignition control module!! same **** happened to me, it eventually got to the point where the car would only start for 20 seconds then shut off

 

Yup sounds like an ignition control module to me

 

Wow, what a crappy month. I've been without internet for almost a week now. Sorry for the huge delay. Since my last little predicament, I've since had a check engine light. There wasn't one at all before, but it showed up yesterday. I did the paper clip trick and pulled (assuming my math isn't in error) three codes:

41 - Open or short in Primary O2 sensor heater circuit
71 - Random Misfire (Cyl 1)
72 - Random Misfire (Cyl 2)

I will add the the car has been running normally since the interstate drive save for Friday afternoon where I incurred the same starting trouble as I did before. After waiting about 10 minutes, it started fine, similar as before also.

 

Sounds very similar to what happened to me before. I had to replace one of the coils in the distributor (sorry, don't remember exactly which one). What happens is the coil gets over heated and expands which offsets the correct spacing/gapping. From what I've heard its pretty common in hondas and could've happened because of your long drive.

 

yep. it's the ignition. i would just suck it up and buy a new distributor. preferably oem honda.

 

Okay, thanks for the input guys. I'll look into getting those things looked at now that I actually have a place to start

 

yeah I would say that it def. sounds like that ignition control module, I've had two friends and theirs did the exact same thing as yours.

 

So, should I just replace the ICM or the entire distributor?

 

ICM will be cheaper, just make sure u remember how it all goes back together when ur taking it out.

 

id buy a whole new one. the price difference isnt too bad for a whole distributor.